{"id":351414,"date":"2026-01-19T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T21:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/why-worlds-largest-air-force-still-growing\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T07:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T21:00:17","slug":"why-is-the-worlds-largest-air-force-still-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=351414","title":{"rendered":"Why Is The World\u2019s Largest Air Force Still Growing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The<span class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\" data-id=\"306101\"style=\";  ;\" class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/tag\/united-states-air-force\/\"  >United States Air Force<\/a><\/span> remains the world&#8217;s largest air force by far, but did you know that, when counting is restricted to just crewed aircraft, <a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/us-air-force-fleet-shrinking-or-growing\/\" >the USAF has been shrinking for decades<\/a> and is set to continue shrinking for the foreseeable future? The US military aviation boasts a much larger lead when the aircraft of the US Navy, Marines, and Army are added. However, a major factor influencing the numbers is whether trainers and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) are included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The USAF remains the world&#8217;s largest, but its number of crewed aircraft is shrinking as the PLAAF grows in numbers. Its UAV fleet is on the up though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,412,423,1328],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aircraft","category-military","category-united-states","category-united-states-air-force"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=351414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351416,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351414\/revisions\/351416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=351414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=351414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=351414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}